With their debut EP Alienate, The Bad Nerves, give us five anthemic songs about social isolation, alienation and feeling bad. I don’t know if this is intentional, but Alienate could be seen as a mini-narrative, where the protagonist tries to navigate a world lacking in empathy and genuine human interaction. On the title track opener grinding guitars, pulsing keyboards and chaotic drums surround Marc LeNeveu’s screams of “So sick of feeling nothing . . . so sick of feeling small.” This sets the formula for a prolonged indictment, that is both sonically catchy and relatable. Each of the succeeding tracks follow suit, focusing on different patterns of self destruction. Like the unfulfilled desire to escape in “I Want to Live with the Aliens,” the anger and rage of “Black Clouds,” or the emotional vampirism of “Parasite.” If this is indeed a narrative, then it is one that fulfils its dramatic arc by literally ending in disaster with the song “Whiplash,” in which our plucky anti-hero gets “smoked by a semi” and the story ends in a tangled mess of broken glass and twisted metal. The ultimate fuck you to surviving only to suffer more emotional pain. (Independent, thebadnerves.bandcamp.com) Dave Skene